Crablegs, breweries, and rainstorms

Weekend ingredients! This past weekend went too fast for sure. Friday after work, I did a little house cleaning and napping. Ryan and I met up with Mom and Dad for dinner at this Asian place that was doing all-you-can-eat crab legs. I pretty much are my weight in crab rangoon and sesame chicken. Got home around 9:30 and felt like a stuffed tick. (gross!) so going out wasn't at the top of the list of things to do. Plus we didn't want to go out and drink...because we had to get up early... to drink.

Met up with Megan around noon on Saturday at the new St. Arnold brewery! Was our first visit and definitely I'll be back soon. Where else can you get the freshest beer ever for 7$ or less? By less I mean you get in for free if you bring in 10 recycled 6 pack holders, you get 4 beer tokens and a small (maybe 8 oz?) commemorative glass. Dad gave us 20 6pack holders the night before so we drank 8 pints of delicious fresh beer (combined) for 0 dollars! ZERO. We stopped at Pinks beforehand and brought a Mediterranean pizza to eat @ the brewery for lunch. Lessons learned: 1) bring chairs. 2) maybe a game? 3) bring extra beer tokens. 4) get there @ 11 if you want a spot @ the picnic tables.

Taps!

Mural

Mash tuns

Ryan and I enjoying our brown ale.

Exterior

After the brewery we went to Porch Swing for a bit to soak up some sun and then went to a free in store (that just so happened to be serving St. Arnold... weird..) to "celebrate" National Record Store day.

It was a really good Saturday.

Sunday was relaxing, woke up to rain so it was a perfect movie day. We watched The Fourth Kind.. (damn Aliens..). Between rain storms, Ryan and I managed to fit a walk in...did a little neighborhood exploring and then grilled up chicken for fajitas for dinner. So so good.

Pretty old oaks in the 'hood.

Hope your weekend was wonderful and you're having a happy Tuesday!

Good Christmas Party!

Thanks to all who came to celebrate! :)

*google images

little family research on a wednesday morning

[ comic from this cookbook, clearly pointing out that Marylanders are better drinkers than Virginians as... dems fightin' words ]
Tormeys:

The gentleman on the far left is Pappy, Harry Heuisler Tormey, Sr, my mom's dad. The woman is Mary Angela, his sister, pictured with his 3 older brothers, George Anthony, Francis Edward, and Joseph Heuisler Tormey. Pappy was born in 1902, and I'm takin' a wild guess, but he looks about 18 here, so photo approximately from 1920? It's ridiculous how much he resembles my brother Peter.

Pappy died on February 5th, 1977, and being born in 1981, I unfortunately never got to meet him, everyone says he was a really great person, that he laughed so much, had bright red cheeks and wavy silver hair.

Pappy was from Baltimore and owned a cookbook called Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland first published in 1932. He made eggnog each Christmas from a recipe in this book. Now, my dad makes it and has become a tradition in our house.

Here is the eggnog recipe, click to enlarge:

I was a little curious about where this recipe came from and who Mrs. Robert E. Tubman was, as we all thoroughly enjoy her little brandy/rum/raw egg concoction into our home every year. Turns out, Mr. Tubman was a Baltimore business man who purchased a home called "Glasgow" from an Irish family in 1840.

Who knows how many Christmases were spent in that home and how many pints of eggnog that family consumed, but I'm thankful to them for sharing their recipe and tradition and I wanted to pass it on.

another fall project!

If anyone has been saving wine corks, and you're not holding on to them for any special reason... I need! Lots! Nora and I drink fair bits of wine, but I don't think we're drinking enough for this -->

... and considering the #s, if you need approx 150 corks... and each bottle of wine was approx 8-10$ a bottle.. the wreath would essentially "cost" $ 1,200 - 1,500 dollars. this is pretty ridiculous/humorous.

I'm up for the challenge.

Don't need no Red Lahbstah!

Here are instructions for having your very own peel n' eat boiled shrimpz fest!

[I bought 2 lbs of jumbo gulf shrimp for 5$ a lb on sale @ HEB (i win!) so this recipe is only for 2 lbs]

Step 1: Make you a drank! (because you probably just got off work and need one. Martini pictured.)

Step 2: Slice fresh french bread.

Step 2: Douse that french bread in Stubbs spicy BBQ sauce Step 3: Get a BIG pot. Put the shrimp in the pot and put enough water in the pot to just cover the shrimp completely. Then take the shrimp out and put the water on the fire to boil. Pour your seasoning in the pot. I like Zatarains and its only $1.25. The whole bag will season 4 lbs of shrimp so I only use half.

Step 4: Once your water and seasoning are boiling, pour your shrimp in and bring back to a boil and cover. Boil the shrimp for no longer than 2 minutes!

Step 5: After 2 minutes, take off heat and let the shrimp stand in the water for 10-15 minutes to soak up the spices. Pour shrimp in a colander to drain water, put shrimp in a bowl and stick in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes, or until they're as cold as you want them (unless you want 'em hot) While they're cooling, whip up the shrimp-dipping sauce. I like light mayo mixed with Vietnamese Sriracha chili garlic sauce. Verrrryyy spicy. At this time, I put the BBQ bread in the oven- it only needs to get a little crispy on the edges, so about 5-8 minutes will be good.

Step 6: Dinner Time! I had a little fried okra that Dad made left over from the night before so I popped that in the oven with the french bread. Peel N Eat :)

Ta- Dah!

Hibiscus Punch? Done & Done.

Hibiscus Punch Emerald Beach Hotel

July 1968

"Can there be a more appropriate mixological metaphor for British colonialism than a drink that combines rum and Pimm’s? Emerald Beach Hotel, the first in the Bahamas to offer air-conditioning, was demolished in the late 1980s.

How to: Shake together or blend for 30 seconds 3 ounces each of orange juice, and pineapple juice, 1 1/4 ounces light rum, 1/2 ounce Pimm’s Cup No. 1, 1/4 ounce grenadine, and a dash each of lemon juice, Angostura bitters, and egg white. Serve the drink in a chilled 12-ounce glass. Serves 1."

Photograph by Romulo Yanes

[Recipe taken from http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/1960s/1968/07/hibiscus-punch-emerald-beach-hotel]

Summer Cocktail: Yucca Flats

I'm reading Newsweek and on one of the back pages there is an essay about summer cocktails. Lately, I've been doing a lot of experimenting with thirst-quenching hot-weather cocktails so this one got my attention.

Excerpts from the article in Newsweek by Julia Reed are below and you can read the full article here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/201745

"The most memorable summer was marked by the introduction of the Yucca Flats—not the nuke site, but a passion-inducing concoction mixed in metal trash cans with floating handfuls of squeezed citrus, and I've always wondered what else, exactly, was in there.

The good (and scary) thing about the Internet is that you can locate not just the answers to such questions, but also a lot of people who appear to have lived your same life—when I Googled "Yucca Flats," a great many cocktail blogs appeared....There was some disagreement about the recipe—versions included vodka, gin, rum, tequila or some combination thereof. But the consensus seems to be that a Yucca Flats is a whole lot of gin mixed with equal parts lemon juice and sugar, shaken or stirred with ice until really cold, and topped with maraschino cherries and halves of lemons, limes and oranges.

It's also time to switch cocktails: warm-weather months have traditionally meant a change from brown liquor to white, from heavy cocktails to those that are lighter and more refreshing—though equally potent.

So now there's also a seasonal shift from the stronger and more savory end of that spectrum to the lighter, fruitier end, which also includes the herbs abounding in the garden. You might switch from a properly muddled old-fashioned to, say, a lemon-thyme margarita.

Even for traditionalists, the garden's the limit. In The Gentleman's Companion exotic-drink book (1946), Charles H. Baker Jr. offers a recipe for a julep made with bourbon, pineapple and mint and another with dark rum, mint and ripe peaches. A Pimm's cup requires cucumber, and bloodies can be made with the juice of heirloom tomatoes. In Mix Shake Stir, a new book from Danny Meyer, there are mojitos flavored with watermelon, strawberries and rose petals and simple syrups flavored with thyme, lavender and basil."

© 2009

________________________________________

This is my version of Yucca Flats:

QTY (1) 750ml bottle of Gin ( I bought Bombay)

1 cup/ 8 oz lemon juice

1 jar of maraschino cherries (juice and all)

1 cup/ 8 oz sugar

Pour into empty gallon jug (ex: milk) and shake vigorously until thoroughly mixed.

Fill tall glass ( ex: pint glass) with ice. Pour 1.5 shots (or 2, whatever you're in the mood for) of the mixture into the glass.

Using a key lime juicer:

Squeeze 1 key lime and one whole strawberry. The strawberry will be squishy so just scrape the berry off the lime squeezer and put in the glass. Top off with club soda.


Using a shaker sealed to the top of the pint glass, shake vigorously until drink is well mixed and ice cold.


So. So. Good. It's like a strawberry, cherry, lemon-limeade. Very refreshing and with a often needed post-work cocktail kick. Perfect for the beach, deck, hammock, patio, stoop, etc.


Enjoy!

Kitchen Fun!

For a refreshing, summer, post-workday cocktail, I made strawberry mojitos! I substituted the club soda for ginger ale (not because i was feeling creative, we didn't have any club soda.. but it did make it a bit sweeter) muddled mint and a whole large strawberry with lime juice and it came out perfect! Because it was a little on the sweeter side, I limited myself to one, but it went really, really fast. Kiss it, Sonic strawberry limeade.


Ryan's birthday is Monday, he's flying into Houston today so after fun with cocktails, it was cupcake time! One box of white angel food cake mix yielded 24 cupcakes and an entire round pan cake. I kept 6 for Ryan's birthday, and took the rest to work. They're good- fluffy angel food with a little almond extract added topped with butter cream icing & chocolate sprinkles. Snacky Treats!